“Have a seat.” He motioned to a chair beside the equipment.
I swallowed, trying not to let my fear show. An official here for an impromptu diagnostic check. Something was seriously wrong. That moment on the train platform, the boy with the aqua eyes—someone must have seen what I had done and ordered an instant deactivation. That had to be it. They probably wouldn’t even try to fix me. It was all over. I forced my feet toward the gray chair and sat down.
“They said you were pretty.” He smiled at me and dabbed at his forehead with a cloth as he came toward my chair. He took a small metal instrument off the equipment table.
“Excuse me, sir?” I didn’t understand his words and I didn’t understand the look on his face. “Sir?”
“Sir.” He smoothed down his sweat-slicked hair and organized the tools prepped and aligned on the desk. “So respectful.”
Involuntarily, I frowned. For some reason I couldn’t pin down, he made me feel uneasy. His behavior seemed anomalous too, but then, I’d never met an official before. Obedience to officials was a Community duty. Officials couldn’t be anomalous … could they?
I had the strangest desire to get out of the chair and run back down the hallway to get away from him, no matter the consequences.
“You aren’t in trouble. This is all quite routine.”
I tried to breathe normally so I wouldn’t set off my heart monitor. Something felt wrong. Whatever he said, this was definitely not routine. The urge to run welled up again, but I forced myself to sit still. He was an official. I had to obey.
But the uneasy feeling only worsened as he moved behind me and lifted my curly ponytail. I knew what he was looking for—the access port at the back of my neck. My chest constricted, cutting off my air. If there was anything wrong with my port, he was going to be able to see it. And if not, he would run the diagnostic and the scans would tell him everything.
This must be what happens right before a subject gets deactivated. I glanced back at him and saw him take a tiny data drive off the table.
“I just need to run a quick program, girlie-girl. You won’t remember a thing.”
I didn’t like the way he said girlie-girl. I didn’t like the tone of his voice or the look on his wide, red face. In fact, nothing about this felt right. Suddenly, obedience and duty were forgotten—I knew I had to get out of here. Now. But just as I moved to get up from the chair and pull away from him, the man grabbed my ponytail roughly and inserted the drive into my neck port. “Voice-activate program 181,” the man said in a breathy voice, coming back around to face me.
I tried to reach around to yank the drive out of my neck but I couldn’t move. I was completely immobile. I could still feel everything—I could feel my arms and legs but I couldn’t move them.
He reached out and put a sweaty hand on my face, then moved it slowly down to my neck. What was going on? I tried to pull back or yell but my lips didn’t move and no sound came out. He started laughing, A chill ran down my still spine.
No, I tried to yell. I knew he could deactivate me in an instant, and I could do nothing to stop him. He could upload anything through that drive and break my programming and hurt me in so many different ways—ways I couldn’t even imagine. I could only sit in mute horror, and my eyes stung in the strange way they did when I was scared or sad. I was suddenly sure that even though I didn’t know exactly what was going on, something very bad was about to happen. And I was powerless to stop it.
My heart was hammering in my chest but the monitor was silent—another result of whatever horrible hardware he’d invaded me with. Out of all the things I’d feared, this, whatever this was, hadn’t even been on my list.
My eyes were the only part of me that wasn’t completely paralyzed, and I looked frantically around the room. There had to be something I could do, but all I could see was myself, alone and frozen in the room with a stranger who had absolute control. A stranger who was getting close to me, wielding tools I had never seen before.
I heard the high-pitched hum in my head—the same as when I’d seen the girl falling from the platform. I paused. Of course. He might have my body trapped, but what about my mind?
My panic bubbled up and I embraced it, reaching out with my screaming thoughts to surround every contour of the side-table lamp with my mind’s humming energy. But I couldn’t control it. I could never control it. The lamp exploded, and my heart pounded in panic and dread. The man looked up, surprised at the noise. Terror made the buzzing in my brain explode.
As the official let out a surprised gasp, the door crashed open and a lanky boy burst in. With a burst of fear, I immediately recognized the green-eyed boy. He scanned the room before finding a blanket, yanking it off the bed, and throwing it over the official, his arm wrapping around the man’s neck in a tight V and squeezing. The man’s arms fluttered uselessly and then he crumpled forward and stopped moving.
In my mind I was screaming, but I still couldn’t move, couldn’t even make a sound. The boy glanced my way and saw the terror shining in my eyes.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t get here sooner,” he said in a rush. “I didn’t see until too late.”
See what? I wanted to ask, but my vocal cords were still paralyzed.
The boy glanced back to see if I’d heard him and his face went red. He ran over to me. “Oh crackin’ hell, I’m sorry. Deactivate program 181. Authorization code 5789345.”
I was released. My hands flew to my face as I scrambled onto the floor. I quickly reached behind me to yank the foreign hardware out of my neck.
“No, don’t!” He half-turned around to me, holding out one hand. He stopped just short of touching me. “Don’t pull out the drive, or we’re both cracked.”
My hand paused on my neck. How had he known about the drive? My sense of relief was immediately replaced by fear. “Why shouldn’t I? How did you know that code? Are you working with him?”
“No, of course not!” he said. “Hurry, we don’t have much time.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. Whatever the boy’s motivations, at least he’d freed me from the paralyzing control of the program.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m Adrien. And I can’t tell you more than that right now.”
I adjusted my hair, careful not to dislodge the hardware in my neck. “Are you from Central Systems?”
“No shuntin’ way,” he said vehemently. “I only want to help you.”
I pulled my arms tight against my chest, hugging myself and looking over at the misshapen lump on the bed. “D-d-did you … deactivate him?” I whispered, the terror of all that had just happened truly starting to sink in.
“No,” Adrien said, “I’m tempted to, but an official’s death would get more investigation. This way it just looks like he passed out. Speaking of.” Adrien reached down and pulled something out of his bag. It was a small metal cylinder, a little bigger than a tablet stylus. He pulled off the cap and I could see two tiny needles sticking out at the tip. He rolled the big man over and jammed the tip of the cylinder into his backside.
I looked away and rubbed my neck, a shiver running down my back when I touched the foreign hardware again. “So why can’t I pull the drive out?”
Adrien looked back at me, carefully capping the needle and putting it back into his small black bag. “With it in, you’re disconnected from the Link and everything is being recorded separately on the drive. None of your vitals are registering but the moment you pull it out, your skyrocketing adrenaline and heart rate will get reported right to the doctors in Central Systems and we’ll get caught instantly. At the very least, they’ll turn the godlam’d cameras in this wing back on.” He pointed to black circular disks on the ceiling.
“Those are cameras?” My stomach dropped. All the ceilings and hallways had those black dots. The underground tunnels. The subway cars. My parents’ dining room.
He nodded and held out his hand. “Come on, let’s get out of her
e.”
“And go where?” I asked, still shocked by the idea that I could be watched all the time, even when I was alone. Of course, it was obvious now that I thought about it. Fingerprint systems weren’t enough to track subject movement. They would want more comprehensive control. Whoever they were.
I made the mistake of looking over at the man on the bed one last time. My hands were trembling. “Was he about to deactivate me?”
I felt something moist on my face. I looked up instinctively to see if the ceiling was leaking somehow. Then I touched my face and realized the water was coming from my eyes. I pulled my hand back and stared at it in bewilderment. I couldn’t handle another malfunction. Not today.
“Come on, Zoe,” Adrien said, his voice gentle. “We gotta get the crackin’ hell out of here. I’ll explain everything later. I promise.”
Panic seized my chest again. How did he know my name? Not just my name, but the shortened name I used in my private thoughts? I’d chosen it for myself when I was looking through the old texts and found out it meant life. But he couldn’t know that.
“Why did you just call me that?”
He smiled distantly. “It’s a better fit.”
He held out his hand. I hesitated, looking first at the strong hand he held out to me and then at the sincere expression on his face. And then, with a jolt of surprise, I realized that he must be able to feel emotions. That was what I was seeing on his face. I wasn’t imagining things this time. He was different from any person I’d ever met—his easy confidence, the life in his voice, the strange words he used. He was awake, alive.
I didn’t know him, didn’t trust him, but I knew with all of these anomalies and what had just happened with the official, I’d be deactivated for sure if I stayed. My lungs squeezed at the thought. I didn’t want that. The gray of being Linked was bad enough, but what was beyond the gray? What was death like? I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the terror of the thought.
“Zoe.” His voice was quiet, but I thought I could hear fear behind it.
I opened my eyes and grabbed his hand firmly.
“Okay.”
* * *
Adrien shut the door quietly behind us. He looked both ways down the dim hallways, then pulled me hard to the right, away from the elevator. I kept watch over my shoulder, as if any second someone would burst out into the hallway and catch us.
And then what would happen? Every moment it sank in more deeply that I had no clue how the world really worked. I was in too deep now and the only thing that gave me the courage to keep moving forward was the slight pressure of Adrien’s hand pulling mine. His touch was intentional and, somehow, it made me feel safe.
We came to a dimly lit dead end. We’d passed several closed doors as we went down the hallway—doors that could open any minute, and we’d be spotted immediately as anomalous. Still holding one of my hands, Adrien reached down into the crevice in the corner between two concrete slab walls. His fingers seemed to find something in the darkness, a button or catch of some kind. Then he whispered, “Open Sublevel One, manual override verification code 999452385.” I held my breath, having no idea what to expect now.
I almost jumped at the sudden grating noise behind us. A jolt of energy rushed down my arm, tingling in my hands. My head was still buzzing with fear.
“What was that?”
He slowly turned us around.
“Our way out.” In the dim light, I could see a small smile on his face. He nodded toward the wall. My eyes followed his and I saw with amazement there wasn’t a wall there anymore. I stepped forward to examine it and could see that the wall had slid back on a track and then rolled to one side.
It was pitch black in the tunnel beyond. My trembling started up again but I kept going anyway. I kept a firm grip on Adrien’s hand as he paused to close the panel behind us. The darkness was so dense and complete, it made the air feel heavy—I could feel it pressing down on me. It smelled strange too, kind of damp and sour, like spoiled milk. Nothing like the antiseptic clean of the Academy hallways.
I touched my forearm panel and it lit up a small sphere in the darkness. I could barely make out two narrow walls leading forward into the black.
“Good idea.” Adrien touched his arm panel as well. “Come on.” There was only room for one person at a time, so Adrien led the way. I was used to small spaces, but squeezing through the two-foot-wide tunnel was unnerving, even for me. I lifted my arm panel for light but could only see the outline of Adrien’s back. I noted with a sense of dread that there would be no easy escape if we were found in this narrow space.
“How far do we go?” I whispered.
“I memorized the blueprints of this place. We’ll walk about a hundred paces before we get to the next panel.”
“How do you—?”
“Later. I’ll answer any question you have later but now I need to focus on counting our footsteps so we don’t miss the panel.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see it. We started forward and without thinking, I silently counted our steps too. In my nervousness, I lost count somewhere in the sixties. Adrien kept steadily leading me along, so I hoped he knew where we were going. If we were found, it would be impossible to explain logically. Adrien stopped suddenly.
“Now what?”
“Now, I find the sensor switch.” He searched up and down the wall with the light from his arm panel. I held mine up, too, for more light.
“Here we are,” Adrien finally said. He sounded relieved and I realized he wasn’t as certain as he’d seemed. He quickly whispered another activation code. I heard the scraping of rock again like we’d heard before.
“Won’t opening these doors set off an alert somewhere?” I asked, suddenly worried. What if we went through all this only to find a squad of Regulators waiting on the other side?
“We got this set up when I came on assignment here. This was always my emergency way out. Of course,” he said, more to himself, “I didn’t expect to be using it already.”
I bit my lip before asking who we was. I imagined that was one of those many questions to be answered later.
“Okay,” Adrien said, “It’s open. Come on.”
The light from our arms didn’t penetrate very far into the open doorway. I took a step while Adrien closed the door behind us. I stumbled but caught myself before I fell.
“Cracking hell,” he said. “You okay?”
“Fine.” I winced. “Just stubbed my toe.”
“Sorry, I should have warned you. This isn’t a hallway. It’s a staircase.” The door finished closing behind us.
“A staircase…” I raised my arm and saw the steep concrete stairwell.
“Yeah, I guess you’re used to elevators.” He seemed to sense my anxiety and went in front of me. “There’s no railing, so just keep a hand on the wall and follow close behind me.”
After we’d climbed more than fifteen steps, I wondered just how much farther there was to go and where exactly we were going. I tried not to think about the steep drop behind me, one that would surely kill me if I fell backward. I lifted my other arm to hold the walls with both hands for support.
“How much farther?” I finally asked. I wasn’t strained for breath—everyone in the Community did a long cardio workout every night; healthy bodies meant a healthy Community, after all—but my thigh muscles were cramping up. I was used to running on a treadmill, not stair climbing.
“Not much,” he said. He didn’t sound out of breath at all.
Again I was struck by the mystery of this boy. Who was he? How did he know so much? Why was he helping me?
Before I could continue through the long list of questions racing through my mind, we reached a small four-by-four-foot plateau at the top of the staircase. Adrien found the switch easily this time and spoke the authorization code. And then, as the last door swung open and my eyes were stung by blinding light, I learned the answer to at least one of my questions.
Adrien wasn’t trying to help
me at all.
He was trying to kill me.
Chapter 4
I FLINCHED AND COVERED my face even though I knew it wouldn’t help. Exposure to the outside air was deadly. And if it didn’t kill you right away, the radiation would lead to tumors soon enough.
I turned to race back down the stairs but Adrien grabbed my upper arm.
“Let go of me!” I shrieked and wrenched away. “Do you have a death wish?”
Images from our textbooks flashed in my mind as I struggled to hurry down the stairs. Boiling skin. Slow, painful deaths. It was probably already too late.
“Zoe!” Adrien grabbed both my arms now, holding me back from the stairs. “Zoe, be quiet or someone will notice!”
I kept pulling away, viciously scratching him with my other hand, anything to get away from that rectangular doorway of toxic Surface air. He growled in pain as I dug my nails in deep. He suddenly twisted me around, holding both of my arms across my chest, encasing me like a straitjacket with his body behind mine. He had me trapped, but I continued to struggle, holding my breath for as long as I could. Icy cold fear raced up and down my spine. He faced me toward the door and the toxic air beyond.
“Calm down!” he said. “Crackin’ hell, I should have just told you before, but I knew you’d never come if I told you we were going to the Surface. Listen to me, it’s not toxic out there!”
My body stopped struggling for a moment in shock at what he said. His voice was an intense whisper, blowing the hair by my ear.
“Walking around without gear won’t kill you. It’s harmless, in fact. The bastards lied, Zoe. They lied about the whole history of the Old World.”
“But the nuclear bombs—”
“Only a few bombs were released on D-day. Just enough to make it convincing. And Community Corp did it themselves. They did it intentionally. Don’t you see? The Community didn’t save you—they caged and enslaved you.”